


Offensive

by ConsultingPurplePants



Series: So what's he like? The other me, in the other place? [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Descriptions of past torture, Flashbacks, Head trauma, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mary is Not Nice, PTSD, neither John nor Sherlock die, or at least this is what i want it to be like, post-tab, this is what series 4 will be like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:12:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5820898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingPurplePants/pseuds/ConsultingPurplePants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>John’s hands are currently pressed against his shoulder blades, under his shirt. His left hand is splayed across the remaining hard lines of three whip scars, while his right rests atop a smattering of rounded, raised, cigarette burns. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Seconds tick by as he realizes he has no idea what to say.</em>
</p><p>Moriarty is back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends :)  
> So this is my first ever full-length fic, and it's not Brit-picked or beta'ed, so if you see anything wrong, please tell me in the comments!  
> I hope you all enjoy it :)

When Sherlock comes to, the first thing he becomes aware of is that the formication has stopped. His limbs feel gloriously insect-free, and he takes a moment to snuggle his face further into John’s neck and sigh in appreciation. 

It takes him a full minute to realize what he’s just done. 

His brief moment of panic must have given him away, because John’s hand comes up and rubs soothingly at his scalp until his breathing normalizes. His heart rate, however, won’t hear of it.

John huffs a quiet laugh into his shoulder, and his breath warms Sherlock to the core. 

“Go back to sleep, Sherlock, it’s still only half three,” he murmurs, promptly falling back asleep himself. 

Sherlock looks down at him, watching his chest move up and down with each breath, until he falls asleep, too.

***

The next time Sherlock wakes up, he’s too warm. He blearily forces his eyes open so he can properly kick the duvet off his bed, then shuffles around a bit to get into a more comfortable position again. 

Which is when he feels the body pressed up against his back. He freezes. 

There’s another quiet laugh, this time into the back of his neck, and the hand pressed possessively against his chest rubs calming circles into his sternum. 

“John?” he whispers tentatively.

“Mmmm,” says John. There’s a pause while he shuffles around, too. “Go back to sleep, love. You’re heavier than you look, and I’m exhausted.”

Sherlock’s brain is too busy burning to the ground from the endearment for him to properly process the rest of the sentence. When he does, though, he has to process it a second time.

“I’m… what?” he finally manages.

John’s breath tickles the back of his neck as he speaks. “You’re heavier than you look, Sherlock,” he mumbles again. 

He lets out a long breath, apparently falling asleep again.

Finally, Sherlock realizes what’s changed. 

“How did we get into my bed, John?” 

John snores theatrically.

“John.”

“John.”

“John.”

“John! Did you carry me here!?” he finally asks, raising his voice.

“Yes. Now will you go back to sleep?” There’s a rustling noise, and then the feeling of John’s lips pressing gently against his shoulder. 

John carried him here. He wishes he’d been awake for that, because the thought is definitely… interesting. To say the least. 

He shifts in John’s grip, twisting every which way until he’s facing him, then slowly moves his head until he can press a shy kiss to John’s lips. John’s eyes fly open and Sherlock pulls back immediately. The tension grows until it’s palpable, the air in the room becoming horribly heavy.

“Sherlock, we can’t… We need to talk about this, first,” John says when the silence finally becomes unbearable. 

“What is there to talk about?” Sherlock asks, confused. 

“Well, for one thing, you had a pretty spectacular comedown yesterday, and I need to make sure you’re all right,” John reasons, but Sherlock shakes his head. His stomach does a flip when he realizes that John hasn’t mentioned Mary at all.

“John, I feel fine, really, there’s no cause for concern.”

John’s lips press into a tight line.

“No. You were shaking like a leaf half the night.” He gets up, untangling himself from Sherlock in the process, and heads towards the bathroom to get his medical kit. 

Sherlock rolls onto his back with an exasperated sigh. He grudgingly admits to himself that the movement _does_ make him feel a little dizzy, and he stops, willing the feeling away. It feels like an eternity before John comes back. 

He thrusts a glass of water into Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock stares down at it until John prompts him. “Drink it, Sherlock. You’re probably dizzy because of dehydration, you haven’t had anything to drink in hours.” 

Sherlock raises the cup to his lips and drains it, realizing how right John was. His body betrays him in the strangest ways.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He ignores John’s look of surprise in favour of looking straight ahead as John shines a pen light in his eyes, inspecting his pupils. John gives a satisfied hum, clicks off the pen light, and pulls out his stethoscope, pressing it to Sherlock’s chest under his shirt. Their faces are close enough that Sherlock can feel John’s breath on his lips, and he knows John can feel it, too. He feels dizzy for a completely different reason. 

John moves the stethoscope to three more locations on his chest before he removes it and places it behind himself on the bed. “You’re right, everything seems fine. How’s your head?” 

“Fine, now,” Sherlock says. He can’t seem to take his eyes off John’s lips. “Thank you for… everything.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for, Sherlock,” John replies, still looking confused by all the gratitude. Sherlock is confused by it, too. He isn’t usually this effusive with his thanks, but it feels almost like something in his mind is prompting him to do it. He doesn’t mind it as much as he thinks he should. 

Rather than address this, Sherlock reaches out and takes John’s hand, lacing their fingers together. It feels perfect, like their hands were always meant to be like this. Disappointment at all the time they’ve wasted rises like bile in his throat. Swallowing it down, he redirects his thoughts towards John’s comment.

“Of course there is. Mary left, and I thought you would leave, too, but you didn’t. You stayed with me all night,” he says. His voice softens. “In fact, you’re still here. You didn’t have to do that.”

John looks shocked. “Of course I had to! Were you listening to anything I said yesterday?” 

There’s something in Sherlock’s throat, stopping him from swallowing properly, and it’s making his eyes sting. He forces back the tears as he tries to maintain eye contact. 

John puts his fingers under his chin and redirects his head so that he’s looking straight into the blue depths of John’s eyes. 

“I love you, Sherlock,” he says, and this time he’s smiling, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and Sherlock has never seen anything so beautiful. 

He realizes he never said it himself, yesterday. 

“I love you, too, John,” he forces past the lump in his throat. 

John’s smile turns a little watery, and he slowly tilts his head so he can press his lips to Sherlock’s. The first touch is almost tentative, their lips barely touching as John brushes his lips against his. It’s soft and gentle, and for the first time since his return Sherlock is genuinely glad to be back. 

John’s second kiss is deeper, and this time, he lets his hands roam until they’re cupping the back of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock pushes himself back up so that they’re kneeling face to face, clinging to John like a drowning man. When John’s tongue gently probes along his upper lip, he lets his lips part, moaning quietly when their tongues stroke past each other. John’s tongue tentatively starts exploring every corner of his mouth while Sherlock tries in vain to pull him closer. It doesn’t take long for him to feel his cock start to harden against John’s in their trousers and he moans into John’s mouth, more loudly this time. The tentative feelings from earlier start to turn into a harder-edged, bone-deep _want_. John’s hands are on his shoulder blades now, pulling him flush against him as they grind together, sparks of pleasure drifting pleasantly through Sherlock’s body. His nerve endings feel like they’re on fire. 

He lets his hands drift under John’s vest, needing more skin-to-skin contact. John groans when his fingers finally touch his bare skin, and then John’s hands are unbuttoning Sherlock’s shirt. He pulls his mouth away from Sherlock’s, leaving him panting, to kiss and lick a trail down the slowly widening strip of bare skin he’s exposing. Sherlock whimpers when John lets his teeth graze his left nipple, and John does it again, gently sucking while Sherlock writhes in his arms. Sherlock has never come undone like this before, and it’s absolutely wonderful until John slides his hands up Sherlock’s back and freezes. 

A moment passes, then two. Sherlock isn’t sure what to make of John’s facial expression, running through his catalogue of them twice before realizing he’s never seen this one before. He takes a breath.

“John?” he asks, and it’s all he can get out, because John’s expression is slowly gaining a layer of steel. 

Has he done something wrong? He hasn’t any experience in this area, obviously, but everything had seemed fine. John still has his vest on, but Sherlock had been about to remedy that situation, and that’s when he realizes what’s wrong. 

John’s hands are currently pressed against his shoulder blades, under his shirt. His left hand is splayed across the remaining hard lines of three whip scars, while his right rests atop a smattering of rounded, raised, cigarette burns. 

Seconds tick by as he realizes he has no idea what to say. 

John slowly unfreezes, but says nothing. Instead, he runs his fingers all across Sherlock’s back, from top to bottom, gently feeling along each scar. His fingers slide from left to write across the welts left by the whips, then return to probe along the circumference of the cigarette burns. They trickle down to rub the small knife wounds, gently stroke the scars that are so numerous now that Sherlock has forgotten where half of them came from. They stay like that for a long moment, while Sherlock tries to work out if John is going to stay and break something or run screaming in the other direction. 

In the end, John is the first to speak. 

“Sherlock? What…” He swallows, then goes in a completely different direction. “I hadn’t even noticed you’d stopped walking around in a sheet.”

“You don’t live here anymore, John,” Sherlock says, and there’s an edge to it that he hadn’t meant to let out. John looks like he’s been slapped. 

Sherlock redirects himself before he says something he’ll truly regret. He goes along with John’s query. “I… yes. I don’t do that anymore.” 

They both fall silent again. Sherlock can practically see the gears turning in John’s head, but for once, it doesn’t irritate him. He can see John trying to run through all of the times he’s seen Sherlock shirtless, trying to figure out when this could possibly have happened. He can see John make the right deduction three times, then shove it away three times. He watches as the gears reach their inevitable conclusion, slow, then stop. 

John says it slowly, like he’s trying to get all of the words right. “When did this happen, Sherlock?” 

Sherlock knows he doesn’t want an actual date; he’s clearly worked out that it was while he was away. 

“Serbia,” he replies instead. “I got captured.” 

“Captured?” John repeats, and Sherlock doesn’t even have it in him to be angry about the repetition. 

“It was the final strand in Moriarty’s web. But I got careless, and I was found out. Mycroft had to pull me out and bring me back here.”

John nods up at him, but he’s clearly still thinking, the military man within analyzing each detail. Sherlock waits. 

John’s eyes widen in horror. “But a rescue must’ve taken—!”

“Eight weeks, give or take a few days, yes,” Sherlock says. “He barely got me out in time, but he did, and he brought me home.” 

“He brought you straight home?” 

Sherlock can’t figure out what sort of timeline John is trying to make out in his head. 

“Yes, right back to London. He told me what restaurant you were going to be at that night, and then I interrupted your wedding proposal.” He hesitates, then adds, almost as an afterthought, “Sorry about that, by the way. I don’t think I’ve apologized for it.” 

“You went right to the restaurant?” John’s voice is shaking. 

“Yes, that’s what I just said. What are you—,” but John interrupts him by flinging himself backwards and putting his face in his hands. There’s a second of silence, and then he’s shaking with anger. Sherlock cowers back. It seems John is going to stick with staying here and breaking something. 

“ _I tackled you to the ground that night_!” he shouts, and Sherlock crawls slowly forwards again. The anger isn’t directed at him. 

“You didn’t know, John, how could you possibly have known?” Sherlock makes a frantic grab for John’s hands, but John isn’t having it. His body is shaking with fury. 

“ _What is wrong with me!?_ You came back from the dead! _The dead_! And I tackled you onto your fresh _torture wounds_!” 

They both freeze as the word falls into the space between them. 

_Torture_. 

Sherlock belatedly realizes that John truly had no idea what he was doing for two years. 

The silence grows to monstrous proportions, swallowing every sound in the room until all they can hear is the dripping tap from the bathroom and John’s gasping breaths. 

_Ping._

Sherlock’s phone. For lack of any and all other options, Sherlock tears his eyes away from John’s huddled figure and pulls out his phone. 

**Hey sexy. You’re not the only one who can fake a fall. Come and play ;)  
** **You know where.  
xox M**

He rereads the message three times. He does know where. But this time, he’s not going without John. 

“John,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. John doesn’t reply.

“We can talk about this later. We _will_ talk about this later. But there are more pressing matters at hand.” 

Sherlock rises from the bed slowly, still watching John. He throws him the phone and starts to get dressed, hoping John will join him. As he starts buttoning his shirt, John raises his head, reads the message, then leaves the room without a word. 

Sherlock slides on his suit jacket and goes into the bathroom to arrange his hair. He tries not to think about where John will be when he exits it. 

When Sherlock finally emerges, unable to put it off any longer, he finds John sitting in his armchair, fully dressed, gun at the small of his back. 

“We’re going to talk about it later,” John says, and Sherlock can’t do anything but nod in the wake of the tsunami of relief crashing over him. 

John gives him a smile layered with danger and anger, and Sherlock can see he’s no longer directing it at himself or at Sherlock.

“Shall we?” John asks. 

“Yes,” Sherlock replies, and takes John’s hand as they run down the steps and out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It doesn’t take long for Molly to find something. She scrambles quickly out from under one of the counters to show him her prize. She hands him the end of a cigarette, and it only takes him milliseconds to analyze it, let it slip from his fingers, and feel the cigarette burns on his back all flare up at once. He grabs the bench in front of him to stop himself from falling as his senses are assaulted from all sides._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the harder stuff is brought up here. Please make sure you read the tags!

The cab ride to Barts is tense. Sherlock is practically vibrating with nervous energy, turning every now and again to check on John.

John isn’t showing any signs of his earlier breakdown, but the way his left hand remains clenched against his thigh does not bode well for the discussion they’ll be having later. Sherlock pushes this out of his mind; for now, he needs to focus on Moriarty.

Sherlock scans through all of the possible scenarios in his head, but ultimately, only one remains. The only place he can think of is the rooftop at Barts, and he’s starting to wonder if it was wise to bring John here after all. 

It’s a place and time he’s always wanted to delete, but he wouldn’t have been able to dismantle Moriarty’s web without it. He’s run through that moment so many times now that he can remember the exact position of the sun and all of the shadows on the rooftop. He’s heard John’s agonized _SHERLOCK_ in countless nightmares while he was gone, but since his return, those dreams have been replaced by different ones, nightmares about dark places and pain and desperation— 

Again, he pushes the thoughts to the back of his mind. There’s a rustling sound to his left, and he turns to find John staring up at him, his expression unreadable. Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock sees his left hand spasm. He hopes his face isn’t giving away too much. 

“He wants us on the rooftop, doesn’t he?” John finally says. Sherlock sometimes wishes John was as much of an idiot as Sherlock always claims. 

“It seems the most likely scenario, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to go up there?” 

Sherlock blinks down at him, startled. “If anything, I would have thought that _you_ wouldn’t be okay if I went up there,” he replies. John’s fist clenches even tighter, and Sherlock briefly wonders if his tendons and ligaments can handle the strain.

“I’ll be fine,” John says, his tone clipped as he turns back towards the window, and that’s the end of the conversation until the cab pulls up in front of the hospital. Sherlock throws a few bills at the driver and climbs out, immediately turning to John. They need a plan, and he would really like to avoid having to jump to his death a second time. 

“You have to stay close to me, John,” he tells him, hoping he won’t argue. 

John nods distractedly, already scanning the building with military precision. Sherlock nods, too, mostly to himself, and together they walk into the building, their steps not quite as in sync as they once were. Sherlock tries not to think about it. He is just opening the door to the security stairs when Molly comes rushing down them, mobile in hand.

“Hooper,” he greets her, and both she and John stop to look at him with confused expressions. 

He stares back, taking an embarrassingly long time to realize his mistake. Something surfaces briefly in the back of his mind, and the smell of a damp, candle-lit room rises in his nostrils before he can get everything under control again. He shakes his head to clear it, then focuses back on the present situation. 

“Molly! Molly, so sorry, somewhere to be, no time for chit chat…” 

He takes John’s arm and starts leading him up the stairs, ignoring John’s protests and Molly’s attempts to engage him. He barely makes it halfway up the first flight. 

“Sherlock! _He’s destroyed my lab_!” she shouts from the bottom of the stairs. Sherlock stops like he’s just slammed into a brick wall, John nearly crashing into him. Cautiously, he puts his head over the guard rail and looks down at her. 

“He’s what!?”

***

“I was about to call you. I figured you should look around first before I called Greg,” Molly is saying, following him around the remains of her lab. Sherlock gives her a brief, appreciative nod before resuming his observation.

Sherlock looks around the burned-out room, already running the possibilities through his head. The lab area at Barts is very up-to-date as far as fire safety goes, and each lab is encased in its own fireproof walls, fire doors blocking their only exits. However, a strong enough fire would still have been able to escape its confines, so there was some sort of precise accelerant used to make sure that it wouldn’t; Molly’s lab is the only one with any sort of damage done to it. The lab benches are scorched black, the plastic parts of the equipment are half melted, but with a single glance, Sherlock can tell what the arsonist had really been after.

All of the paper files are destroyed. There is not a single paper patient file left on the shelves, and there had been hundreds of them. The computers are burned to a crisp, the towers containing their most precious parts melted into so many hunks of useless plastic. It takes Sherlock a moment to understand why, and for the first time in his life, he hopes he’s made the wrong deduction. 

“Molly, how far back did the files go? Electronic and paper?” 

With a single glance at Molly, he can see that she’s thinking the same thing, and that isn’t a good sign. John is still looking confusedly back and forth between them. “We’re still in the process of transferring some of the older data from the paper files to the digital patient files, but all of the patient files from the last five years should still be in there. The original digital files are all on the computers of the labs they came from, and we upload them into the main database from here.” 

“Can you access the main database from here? From anywhere? I need to see something, I need to—,” he trails off as he pulls out his phone, trying to get a signal. He doesn’t realize he’s manically pacing back and forth until John grabs his arm, trying to get him to slow down. His touch is like an anchor, grounding him in the present, and he takes a deep breath. John looks up at him, giving him a calming smile, and for the first time since he came back, Sherlock’s brain manages to focus. 

“We don’t need the database. Obviously Moriarty’s file will have either been deleted or replaced; he’s destroyed the original files to cover his tracks. It will be like he never died,” he says, and the implications of that come rushing home. “He’s still active, and he wants us to know it…. Why, why, why does he—.”

“He died, Sherlock,” says Molly, and Sherlock whips around to face her.

“He wasn’t the best boyfriend, but I still knew it was him.” She laughs nervously.

John’s not convinced. “Molly, are you really sure? I’m sure there are ways around—

“She’s sure, John. She had more contact with him than any of us, I trust that she can identify his body.”

Sherlock keeps pacing, picking up some soot from one of the lab benches and rubbing it between his fingers. He’s already examined its texture several times before he hears the absolute lack of sound in the lab. He looks up from the soot on his thumb to find both Molly and John looking at him with shocked expressions. 

“…Did I say something wrong?” he asks, having no idea where he misstepped this time. 

“Did you just… not question something someone said?” John responds slowly. 

Sherlock sighs. “Molly is a pathologist. She went to medical school for five years, then completed a post-graduate programme of at least six years to be here; I trust she knows how to examine a body. She also went on several dates with Moriarty, or _Jim from IT_ , as he was styling himself at the time, and therefore has had much more time to examine his face and facial expressions than either of us. Of course I would think she’s qualified enough to simply _identify_ his body from his face, which was intact, by the way, because he shot himself through the mouth and out the back of his head.” 

John keeps gaping at him, but Molly nods at him, her face serious, and starts examining the less-destroyed corners of the lab. Sherlock stares pointedly at John until he joins her. Satisfied, he goes back to examining the soot on each lab bench, trying to deduce what sort of accelerant they used. Its origins could be key to figuring out which parts of Moriarty’s web are still active.

To figuring out what he’d missed.

It doesn’t take long for Molly to find something. She scrambles quickly out from under one of the counters to show him her prize. She hands him the end of a cigarette, and it only takes him milliseconds to analyze it, let it slip from his fingers, and feel the cigarette burns on his back all flare up at once. He grabs the bench in front of him to stop himself from falling as his senses are assaulted from all sides. 

_His arms are chained to the wall, his wrists chafing horribly as he tries to hold himself up despite weeks of sleep deprivation. Behind him, another member of Moriarty’s Serbian organization smokes, alternating slow drags and quick inhales so that he can’t tell when the next end will be put out on his back._

_“Why did you break in here?” spits his captor. He’s resisted answering the question this long, he’ll be able to resist longer. He still can’t help crying out when the next burn comes, a pinprick of pain that slowly intensifies until he can_ feel _his cells dying, the lysosomes bursting, the enzymes within digesting his own tissues. He screams again when his captor presses his finger over the new burn._

“—lock! Sherlock!” 

John is shaking him, trying to pry his fingers from the lab bench they are trying to embed themselves into. John takes one look at his face, then pulls him into a hug, and Sherlock collapses into his arms with deep, gasping breaths. He’s barely aware of Molly discreetly leaving the room, taking care not to slam the lab door behind her. 

He clutches at John, heaving, until his breathing starts to go back to normal. His face feels wet, and he realizes he’s made a large stain on John’s jumper. He pulls back, wiping his face on his sleeve. 

“Sorry. I— Sorry,” he manages, and he’s embarrassed that those seem to be the only words he’s capable of saying at the moment. 

John eyes him for a moment, still loosely holding his arms, then quietly asks, “The burns?”

Sherlock nods. He won’t be needing the accelerant to identify them, after all.

“The compound I had tried to infiltrate was in a very remote location in the northern part of the country. There was very little access to supplies, so whenever shipments came in, they had to be shared with the entire group. They only smoked one small, local brand of cigarettes,” he nods to the one on the floor, “and therefore only used one brand of cigarettes on me.” He stops, leaning into John again. 

John holds him close, and Sherlock lets himself be lost in it. He feels the warmth of John’s arms holding his body together, John’s hair soothingly rubbing against his cheek, John’s hands stroking up and down his back. There’s a moment of silence.

“You said Mycroft rescued you, right?”

Sherlock nods into his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t he have taken down the rest of the organization while he was there?”

***

Sherlock leaves the cigarette end on the kitchen table as he and John settle into their armchairs in the sitting room. John sits down for a moment, looks at Sherlock, then pulls his armchair towards his until they’re sitting knee-to-knee. Sherlock tries not to think of John’s stag do. 

“You ready?” John asks, and Sherlock nods, pulling out his mobile and dialing Mycroft’s number. He sets it to speaker.

“ _The Serbians are back, then?_ ,” comes from the other end of the line, and Sherlock has to resist hitting the end button right away. 

“Yes, right under your supposedly omnipotent nose,” he retorts, preparing to savour the shocked silence that should come right about—

“ _I’d so hoped it wouldn’t come to this_ ,” replies Mycroft, and Sherlock feels his eyebrows go straight into his hairline. 

“You knew this was a risk!?” he demands, angry this time.

“ _Of course I knew, Sherlock, but I was hoping you’d damaged them enough that this wouldn’t happen! As for not telling you, did you really think I was going to allow you to go back after what happened to you_?”

“You seemed perfectly happy to send me back not two days ago!”

“ _You had just_ killed _a man, Sherlock! There is only so much I am capable of doing_!”

“Have they been active this whole time, then? I’ve been back for nearly a year, Mycroft!” he glances up at John to gauge his reaction, but John simply looks confused. 

“ _No. The lab at Barts is the first I’ve heard of them since your return. It seems they have finally located their leader_.”

“Who is it? Who’s leading them? Does the tax-paying English public know how little their money is actually capable of accomplishing?”

“ _Moriarty, of course_ ,” and Sherlock can practically hear him sneering. John’s head jerks up.

“Moriarty’s dead! Sherlock watched him shoot out the back of his head, and Molly confirmed it was him!” he snaps. Sherlock slowly shakes his head. 

“The man you and I knew as Moriarty is dead, of that I am sure.” He thinks back to his overdose on the plane and winces. “The question is, who is his successor?”

“His successor? I don’t understand,” says John, starting to look agitated. Sherlock opens his mouth to explain, but Mycroft beats him to it. 

“ _Moriarty isn’t a person, John. It’s a title. The title that the world’s most powerful criminal can call his or her own. The man you and Sherlock encountered was but the latest iteration of that name; can you really imagine a man of approximately thirty-five years being capable of gaining that many contacts in that many countries in such a short lifespan_?” 

John is gaping at him for the second time that day. Sherlock confirms it for him. “The case I was reviewing in my mind palace, the Ricoletti case? The outcome was that the bride was well and truly dead, but other women were taking her name and dress and committing the same crimes, towards the same goal. Moriarty is but a name that people whisper in the criminal underclasses, it can bear any face it wants.”

Mycroft continues for him. “ _Precisely. The Moriarty who arranged for a sniper rifle to be aimed at your head at Barts nearly three years ago is not the same Moriarty you are fighting now, John. They are two completely different people who are simply working towards the same goal_.” 

“But if they’re two different people, why destroy the lab at Barts? Wouldn’t he have to be dead for the successor to take over anyway?” asks John. Sherlock is impressed with his question, but it’s still an easy one to answer. 

“ _There has been no battle for succession, nor have any of his contacts heard that he has died. If they were to find out now, there would be a fight for the name. Moriarty’s successor seems to have decided it would be easier to spare themselves that fight and simply go on as the old one did_.”

“So what you’re telling me now is that the Serbian arm of the operation is not only still active, but now has a leader?” Sherlock demands.

“ _Not at all. I’m telling you that they were likely the only branch that was aware of the changeover between leaders, and had already been working with the successor for the past two years. You may even have encountered them while there. However, you still managed to wreak such havoc in their ranks that they’ve only managed to become truly active again now. Which was why I’d hoped—_.” 

Sherlock smashes his index into the _end_ key and throws his phone at the sofa with a frustrated sound. The implication that he may have met the new Moriarty and failed to destroy them rankles and stings, especially since finding them _now_ will be a challenge in itself. He feels the blackness of his mood settle across his back like a cloak.

He looks up at John, only to find that John isn’t looking at him at all; he seems to be incredibly interested in something on the wall just above Sherlock’s left shoulder. Just as Sherlock starts debating whether or not nudging him would be wise, John’s eyes flicker back to his. 

“Arranged for a sniper rifle to be aimed at my head?”

Sherlock puts his face in his hands. Damn Mycroft and his meddling. He hadn’t meant for John to find out now, especially like this. He’d already had a near breakdown earlier that morning, he didn’t need more new information. Especially new information concerning his own life. 

“Answer me, Sherlock,” John says, and his tone brooks no argument. 

He takes one of Sherlock’s hands in his own and his gentleness is completely at odds with the hardness in his voice. Sherlock looks down at their entwined fingers, startled. After this morning, he hadn’t been sure John still wanted this, wanted him. He could offer nothing resembling a stable or healthy relationship; not everyone would want to stay. 

Hardly anyone ever had.

“That first night, you asked me why I had jumped,” he begins. John nods.

“I only told you half the truth. Yes, Moriarty had to be stopped, but the true reason I jumped was because Moriarty had snipers on you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade,” he mutters to their fingers. “Honestly, a single sniper on you would’ve been enough, and he knew that. He was probably ensuring he had a backup plan.”

He looks up at John, fails completely to read his expression, focuses back on their hands, then forges on. “I couldn’t tell you I was still alive because if you knew I had survived the jump, so would the snipers, and I would have come back to your corpse.” 

The very idea is so abhorrent he has to quell a wave of nausea. 

“So you’re saying… you jumped to save my life?” There’s a breathy quality to John’s voice, and Sherlock would be able to tell why if he would just look up at him, but it’s much easier to just stare at their joined hands and pretend none of this is happening. 

“Sherlock, how long have you been in love with me?” comes an awed whisper, and Sherlock jerks his head up, surprised. 

There was no defined moment when he fell in love with John Watson. It’s such an integral part of him, now, that he can’t even remember a time when John Watson wasn’t the most important thing in his life. He tries to formulate a proper sentence, an explanation of his feelings, but what comes out is, “Since the first time you told me I was extraordinary.”

He doesn’t manage to get out anymore words because John tilts his chin up and kisses him, hard, like he never wants to let him go. It feels like he’s drowning in John, and if he had to choose a way to die, it would be like this. He releases John’s hand so he can pull him closer, but somehow John ends up pulling him closer instead, and that’s how he ends up straddling John in John’s armchair, kissing him like his life depends on it. 

Eventually, John pulls away and gently runs his hands through Sherlock’s hair. “I’ve loved you since the day I walked into that lab at Barts,” he whispers into Sherlock’s chest, and Sherlock’s heart aches. 

After a moment, John seems to collect himself. He kisses Sherlock’s chest where his cheek was pressed to it moments before, and gently lifts Sherlock off himself so he can stand. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to make us a quick fry-up,” he ignores Sherlock’s groan at the thought of food and keeps talking, “You’re going to eat some of it, and then we’re going to find the second Moriarty.”

Sherlock opens his mouth to protest, or at least to say that according to his research, this is at least the tenth Moriarty, but one look at the renewed determination in John’s eyes stops him in his tracks, and he follows John into the kitchen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John puts a forkful of egg into his open mouth and Sherlock splutters. John smiles, the closest he’s come to an actual laugh in the past two days. Sherlock glares at him just to keep things natural, but dutifully chews as he internally vows to splutter as much as possible in the future if it will make John laugh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, please heed the tags!!

Sherlock sits down at the table, chair legs creaking under his weight, as he watches John busy himself with the frying pan. There had been an odd moment where he’d considered having a furtive smoke, but then he’d caught sight of the cigarette end still on the table and had been forced to crush a panic attack before it began. 

He takes a deep, calming breath, and to his great surprise, the smell of warm eggs and spicy vegetables actually makes his stomach rumble. He hopes John doesn’t notice; Sherlock can’t have him getting too enthusiastic about feeding him, after all.

The silence in the kitchen is a companionable one, neither of them having much to say for the moment. Sherlock allows himself to simply bask in the fact that John loves him, that John has always loved him, and that it just might be enough. Pushing thoughts of Mary aside, he lets himself imagine, just for a moment, that he could have this. That he could wake up every morning beside John, sit down for breakfast every morning with John. That this could become his everyday life. 

John plunks a plate down in front of him, dashing him out of his reverie, and hands him a fork. Sherlock looks up to find John giving him a stern look. “You’re going to eat this,” he says, and there’s no arguing with his tone. 

Sherlock opens his mouth to try anyway. “But what if—.” 

John puts a forkful of egg into his open mouth and Sherlock splutters. John smiles, the closest he’s come to an actual laugh in the past two days. Sherlock glares at him just to keep things natural, but dutifully chews as he internally vows to splutter as much as possible in the future if it will make John laugh. 

John lifts a forkful towards his own mouth. “So, what do we know?” He waits for Sherlock to swallow. “I still don’t understand why they had to destroy Molly’s lab.”

Sherlock takes another bite, trying to will the words to form coherent sentences. The beginning will probably be the hardest part to explain. “Do you remember Rich Brook?”

John nods. “Of course. Moriarty’s secret identity. Or rather… Moriarty was _his_ secret identity.”

“Moriarty is capable of creating alternate identities at the drop of a hat. He has the resources, the people, the contacts, everything necessary to do it. It’s easy, because they aren’t real people. He just needs the skills to enter their information in the appropriate places.

“The problem that the next Moriarty is having isn’t creating a new identity; it’s making sure that an existing one hasn’t died. Like Mycroft said, only one part of the organization is aware that Moriarty has died and been replaced. The new Moriarty wants to revive the other parts without having to deal with a power struggle, which could take months to resolve. The easiest way for them to do this is to pretend that Moriarty never died at all. Moriarty was always a name; only a very small and select few have ever had actual, face-to-face dealings with him. I’ve taken care of those people for them, apparently, so it shouldn’t actually be that hard for them to do, especially since they have all the resources and knowledge the old one had. 

“Unfortunately for them, there are records, however secret they may be, that prove that Moriarty is in fact dead. If these records were to emerge, especially during a power struggle, there would be a lot of trouble in the criminal underworld, possibly even an uprising against the new Moriarty. 

“The new Moriarty just wants to get back to business as usual as smoothly as possible.”

John chews thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving Sherlock’s face. “Ok, but again, what does that have to do with the lab? And the Serbian part of the web?”

It’s a testament to how much Sherlock loves John that he doesn’t roll his eyes and say something uncouth. Instead, he simply sighs before explaining, “That lab contained the only hard copy evidence that Moriarty is dead. There are autopsy files, which, while they are confidential, would spell his end if they were released. 

“The Serbians entered the lab, used the lab computers to remove any and all data from Moriarty’s autopsy from the main database, then destroyed all the computers and files in the lab to make sure they could never be re-uploaded into it.” 

John’s eyes widen. “So you’re saying that effectively, Moriarty never died?” 

Sherlock’s hands involuntarily tighten against the table before John puts down his fork and strokes his thumbs gently across them. He tries to relax. 

“Yes. Everything I worked for in those two years has basically been for nothing,” he spits. “Moriarty can just waltz right back into the old parts of their organization, find the people that are left, and revive the whole thing. The entire two-year mission hinged on Moriarty being _dead_!”

The rage he has been holding in all day is threatening to burst out. 

“Sherlock, don’t. Just—,” John gets up and wraps his arms around him, and Sherlock feels a prickling in the back of his eyes as a few tears leak into John’s shirt. He crushes John to him, feeling as though he’s the only thing keeping him grounded. 

“You saved us. Sherlock, you saved our lives. That’s already so, so much,” John whispers fiercely into the top of his head. Sherlock crushes him closer and takes a deep breath, willing the tears to stop. 

“As we speak, they’re probably getting rid of everyone who carried out the job in the lab. Now no one will know the truth,” he tells John’s stomach. 

“We know the truth,” John says, and Sherlock lets that be enough. 

***

Mycroft sends them surveillance videos of the base Sherlock was imprisoned in. John is watching one on his laptop, his tea long-forgotten at his elbow, and taking notes on who goes in and who goes out. Sherlock is taking care of the videos containing dialogue, since John has absolutely no grasp on languages. 

The more conversations he listens in on, the more the reality of the situation comes crashing down on him. 

He’d spent two years trying to prevent exactly this from happening, and in the end, it had happened anyway. Now, John was no longer safe. Mrs Hudson was no longer safe. Lestrade was no longer safe. From the conversations, it would appear that the last Moriarty knew they were going to be the successor even before Moriarty shot himself. This had all been planned already, and he hadn’t had even an inkling that it was a possibility. 

He wants to rage at something, but he stops himself from calling Mycroft and simply screaming at the phone in frustration. Mycroft had pulled him out too early, it was obvious, but if he hadn’t, Sherlock would probably be dead. He had gotten as far as he could go, and Mycroft was fully aware of that. Calling him now would only call attention to the fact that Mycroft had been right and he had been wrong, so he throws his phone back down. John looks up at the noise, takes one look at his face, and gets up from the desk, the video still playing behind him. He hears muffled speaking and a few gunshots. 

John pushes and rearranges him until there’s enough room for both of them on the sofa before sitting down and pulling him close. Sherlock turns his face into John’s shoulder and breathes him in, letting the feeling of home comfort him. John runs his fingers through Sherlock’s hair. 

“Hey,” he says softly. “Is everything—.”

Before he can say anything more, there’s a familiar shout from his tinny laptop speaker. The voice may be speaking Serbian, but the deep baritone is unmistakable, as are the cries of pain. 

He’d managed to stop the earlier panic attack, but he’s been in a fragile state since the last flashback, and this is too much at once. There’s nothing he can do to stop his entire body feeling like an open wound. 

_“What are you doing?” he demands, the language feeling thick on his tongue. His head is still cloudy from the previous hit he took trying to fight them off. The hands around his arms tighten in response, and someone hits him in the temple again. The whole world spins around him as the pain flashes through his mind, tiny daggers tearing open every gyrus, every cell they can find. He cries out and they laugh._

_“Don’t try to argue!” one says mockingly. “We know you’re a spy.”_

_He tries to tear his arm away, survival instincts slowly taking over the more rational parts of his brain. He is purely fight or flight now; Sherlock is nowhere to be seen as he tries to retreat into his mind palace, letting his transport take the beating._

_He’s jerked back out almost immediately when he receives a violent kick to the ribs. He screams as he feels the bones breaking, while some far off part of his mind calmly tells him he’s lucky the rib didn’t perforate his lung. Even then, the lung contusion he likely just got will take months to heal. He screams again as someone punches him in the exact spot he was just kicked._

“SHERLOCK!” 

Why is he lying on the floor? How did he… 

The only sound in the sitting room now is John’s harsh breathing as he looks down at him. Upon closer examination, his forearms are scratched and one is bleeding slightly, and a tidal wave of guilt crashes into Sherlock as he scrambles away from the damage he’s done to the one person he’d wanted to protect the most. John looks at himself, confused by what’s scared Sherlock, then sees the blood and comes after him. 

He holds out his hand, and Sherlock stares at it for much too long before finally taking it in his own. He breathes out at the contact and finally looks up at John. It’s taking him much longer to come back to himself than last time, and he hates it. He hates everything about this. He knows that PTSD is perfectly normal given the level of trauma he had experienced while at the hands of his captors, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. John had nightmares, yes, but at least it had never interfered with his daily life after he had cured him of his limp. 

Or had it?

Sherlock realizes he actually has no idea how PTSD affected John in his day to day life, but he also realizes this is probably not the best time to ask. John has always been a mystery to him, and it’s one of the things he’s always loved about him. And if he’s never noticed John’s PTSD bleeding through into his daily routine, John must be much stronger than he’d ever given him credit for.

He clutches at John’s jumper, trying to get his brain back under control, something he’s had trouble with since he came back. John gives him an understanding look before rearranging his jumper so that the sleeve goes over his fingers and he can gently wipe the tears from Sherlock’s face. Sherlock feels something in his chest twist. 

“Are you…” John starts, but quickly shakes his head. “Of course you’re not all right. I’ve stopped the video, if that’s any comfort.”

Sherlock nods, still unsure of what to say. He looks past John at the windows, and for the first time he notices how late it’s gotten. John reaches up and pushes Sherlock’s hair from his eyes, smoothing it back from his forehead. 

“It’s late. You’ve had a lot of massive shocks today. So’ve I, come to think of it,” he says, giving a tiny, uncomfortable laugh. “Let’s go to bed. We’ll look through all the footage in the morning.”

For once, Sherlock isn’t even thinking of arguing. He feels so overwhelmed by everything he’s discovered today, not to mention both flashbacks, that he wants nothing more than to curl up and never think again. He lets John lead him into the bedroom, where they both strip down to their pants. John hugs him, and there’s nothing sexual about it; they both take warmth from each other, take comfort from each other, and then John is pulling back the duvet and gently edging him into his own bed. John pads around to the other side so he can get in without disturbing Sherlock. He pulls the duvet over them both. 

Sherlock turns around so they’re facing each other before reaching a hand across and taking John’s. He laces their fingers together and watches them in awe. John gently squeezes his hand, then scoots closer, pulling Sherlock to him so that Sherlock is half-sprawled on top of John, his face pressed into the warmth of his neck. Sherlock feels the tension start to leave his limbs. 

John’s hand strokes down his back, then freezes for a moment as he seems to remember what’s there. Sherlock sighs. 

“It’s fine, John. Comforting, even,” he mumbles into John’s neck. John’s hand keeps moving, but with slightly less confidence, this time. 

“I’m just… I don’t want to hurt you, Sherlock. Not again,” John tells the ceiling. Sherlock squeezes him tighter and feels John smile into his curls. He waits a beat, but John clearly doesn’t intend to ask anything more about the scars until this is all over. Until Sherlock is ready to answer, even though it must be fairly obvious by now what’s happened to him. 

Just as he’s about to drop off to sleep, he hears a whispered, “I love you, Sherlock.”

And for a moment, he can pretend that absolutely nothing is wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John ends the call with a shell-shocked expression. His mouth works, but no words come out. In the end, Sherlock forces himself to break the silence._
> 
> _“John, your pregnant wife is in labour. You should be there,” he says quietly, hating every word coming out of his mouth. He’d truly thought he’d have more time with John before this happened._
> 
> _He forces himself not to cry._

He’s warm, balanced on the edge between overly so and content. He lets himself drift a moment longer, appreciating John’s arm slung across his chest and John’s breath warming his neck. 

Eventually, he slowly blinks open his eyes and looks up at the ceiling, trying to tell the time of day by the particular shade of white, but it’s still too dark to tell. It must be fairly early, then. He’s just trying to decide whether turning over and making himself the little spoon is a good idea when John snuffles loudly into his neck. Another time, then.

The arm across his chest tightens for a moment before loosening again, content to simply rest there. Sherlock snuggles closer.

“Hey,” John whispers. “Are you all right?” 

Sherlock nods. Yesterday had been too much, too soon, he’s very much aware of that now, but it had also been necessary. He feels as though his mind has settled down again in the night, reorganizing itself and pushing the horrors of the past two years back into the dark, dusty corner where they belong. He knows he’ll have to deal with them later, but for now, this is enough. It will have to be. 

Yesterday was the first time he’d had real flashbacks since his return. Yes, his mind had been disorganized and much harder to control, but he had never truly lost his grip on it until he saw the cigarette in Molly’s hand. He had really thought this was all over; that he had won, that Moriarty was out of their lives forever, that he could come home to John. 

His mind had clearly not adapted very well to the new reality that had greeted him upon his return. When all this was over, he would have to take the time to sort through his mind palace again and get everything back under control.

For now, though, he has a more immediate problem on his hands. This is the second night in a row that John has slept here, and as they found out very recently, Mary is a very intelligent woman. An intelligent woman who is very good with guns.

As much as he loves John and wants him to stay, the reality is that John has another home, another family. And what chance would he stand against John’s daughter? 

When he opens his eyes, John is frowning at him, his brows knitted together in concern.

“We have to go over the rest of the surveillance tapes,” Sherlock finally says. He knows John will try to argue, but it’s the only lead they’ve got. The CCTV cameras around Barts are, as it turns out, woefully inadequate, and Moriarty’s people had been able to easily slip right around them. 

And now, the countdown to the entire operation’s revival has begun. Moriarty had had to lie low at first, since any hacker with even the slightest skills could have proved they were dead with the click of a mouse, but now? 

No matter what John says, if Sherlock can’t find Moriarty before any of this happens, his two years away _will_ have been for nothing, because none of them will be safe. 

John does open his mouth to argue, looking up at Sherlock. Sherlock’s not quite sure what his expression shows, but John promptly closes his mouth, looking defeated. 

“Are you sure it’ll—,” he begins, but is interrupted by his mobile going off on the bedside table. Both of them stare at it, almost as if they’ve forgotten the use of such a device, and it eventually quiets. There is a pause, and then it vibrates loudly, once, signaling the presence of a voicemail. John rubs his hands over his eyes and starts to continue his sentence, but the mobile starts ringing once again. 

Sherlock sighs. “Pick up, John. Must be important.”

John groans and rolls over, reaching the bedside table just before the final ring. “Hello?”

Sherlock can’t hear what the person on the other end is saying, but he can easily read it in John’s face. He waits as the person speaks, watching John’s eyes grow wider and wider until they’re wide as saucers, threatening to fall right out of his head and onto the bed. 

John reaches for Sherlock’s hand as the person speaks, and Sherlock immediately cottons on. Whatever has been said has triggered John’s protective instincts. The only things that would trigger these are Sherlock (if he flatters himself a bit) and… his as-yet unborn child. Sherlock is clearly already protected, which means that the person on the other end is Mary, and she has probably just gone into labour. 

John ends the call with a shell-shocked expression. His mouth works, but no words come out. In the end, Sherlock forces himself to break the silence.

“John, your pregnant wife is in labour. You should be there,” he says quietly, hating every word coming out of his mouth. He’d truly thought he’d have more time with John before this happened. 

He forces himself not to cry.

“But the… the surveillance tapes. And you! After what happened yesterday, you can’t possibly tell me you’re all right watching—.”

“John. Your pregnant wife is in labour,” Sherlock repeats. He detests repetition, but sometimes an exception must be made, and besides, it helps distract him from the tightness in his chest and the incessant prickling in his eyes. “I am fine. I can keep going over the conversation tapes alone.”

John still looks torn. Of course he is. He’s just spent two nights wrapped around his best friend after admitting his feelings for him. Despite these feelings, however, John has Mary. His wife. 

And his daughter, now. 

“John. Go,” he grits out before he can change his mind. 

John takes a deep breath, then leaps into action. He tugs on yesterday’s clothing in a frenzy and rushes out the door with only one arm in his coat sleeve. As if in a dream (or rather, a terrible nightmare), Sherlock hears the front door tear open, then slam shut. 

Sherlock finally lets the tears fall. They slide down his cheeks in rivulets, a horrible reminder that he’d been too slow, had come back too late, had never told John how he felt. His hands clench together in his lap as his chest heaves. 

Feet come stomping back up the stairs. His door is unceremoniously yanked open. John freezes in the doorway. 

“Oh, Sherlock—.”

And John springs into action, holding Sherlock’s head against his chest as the tears continue to fall. Sherlock’s shoulders shake with the sobs, too far gone to be ashamed at this blatant display of emotion. John runs his fingers through his hair, murmuring _I love you, I love you, I love you_ into the top of his head. 

The tears haven’t quite stopped when John pulls away and runs his thumbs across Sherlock’s cheekbones. His eyes are shining.

“I just… I thought—,” Sherlock stammers, then stops to collect himself. “I thought we had more time.”

John presses a soft kiss to the tip of his nose, and the tears threaten to explode out of him with a force thus far unknown to man. 

“We’ll have all the time in the world. We _do_ have all the time in the world,” he whispers fiercely.

Sherlock shakes his head. “You have a family now.”

“We’ll get a divorce. We’ll share custody of our daughter. If you… If you want her around,” John says, the question evident in his voice. 

Sherlock’s eyes widen. “Of course I’ll want her around. She’s a part of you.”

John crushes him to his chest and for a moment, neither of them breathe. 

John still has to leave.

Sherlock forces a shaky laugh. “And besides, we’ll share a name.”

If anything, John’s laugh is even shakier. “Git.”

Feeling like his heart is splintering in two, Sherlock gently pulls away. “You have to go.”

John softly kisses his lips, and with a final _I love you_ , is gone. Sherlock breathes, wraps himself in the duvet, and goes out to the sitting room. 

The flat immediately feels alien to him. John’s warm, comforting presence is no longer there to make it feel like home, and it feels like all of the good feelings he woke up with have been sucked out the door with John. He pulls the duvet up around his shoulders against the sudden cold and shudders. 

In the dead silence of the flat, it takes him longer than he’d like to admit to drag himself to his laptop. He settles on the sofa, duvet billowing out around him, and pops in the third surveillance disk. The recorded conversations were mostly obtained by small cameras Mycroft had provided him with and that he’d proceeded to plant all throughout the base before being discovered. Although, he was still fairly sure he hadn’t been discovered so much as ratted out. 

He’d never managed to figure out who had done it, however. 

Hitting play, he settles his head back on the armrest and tries to focus, Serbian not coming to him as naturally as it did when he was immersed in it daily. Alas, that was always the way with languages. 

The office on screen is empty, but as he watches, two men enter and start discussing absolutely mundane things. He sighs, settling in for a long day.

_It’s getting colder, now. The supplies will be harder to obtain._

_Not harder to obtain. Just more expensive_. They both laugh. Sherlock grimaces. Money was never an object, not with the amount of trade Moriarty’s name was allowing them to do. 

_Are we running out of anything?_

_Just cigarettes._ They both laugh again, but there’s an unpleasant edge to it this time that makes his skin crawl. _He’s making us go through them twice as fast._

Their laughter nearly sets Sherlock off again, but he drags in several deep breaths and closes his eyes, pausing the video. It takes a few minutes, but he manages to get his body back under control.

They’d already found him at this point; he’s too far along in the timeline. He pushes their laughter to the back of his mind and rummages around until he finds an earlier disk. He swaps them out. 

The same office appears, but this time there is only one man, and he appears to be waiting for someone. He drums his fingers on the desk, the sound already starting to drive Sherlock crazy by the time the other person walks in. 

_She says there’s someone here who does not belong_ , says the new man. 

_And how does she plan to prove that?_ The man behind the desk seems angry, almost resentful.

The new man looks cautious. _You have to remember that he’s gone, now. She is the only thing we have left._

_And will that show me who the mole is!?_ He’s definitely resentful. Sherlock pauses the video and wracks his brain. He had been there a long time, and he’s fairly sure he had never seen a single woman. He cannot begin to fathom who the man is talking about, nor why he seems to hate the woman so much. Perhaps he misheard the pronoun? He hits play again.

_She knows who it is, and she will tell you_ , the new man says tentatively. He’s definitely saying _she_.

There were a lot of rivalries within the group, usually having to do with who did what jobs. He had made it pretty high up in the organization, but he hadn’t met either of these people. And he certainly had never seen a woman.

_That bitch doesn’t know her place_ , growls the man behind the desk, and that’s when the video goes nearly blurry from the speed at which the newcomer enters. There’s a flash of black across the screen, and suddenly, a woman all in black with short blonde hair appears in the room.

_I know exactly where my place is_ , she says with a sort of deadly calm, her accent even more flawless than Sherlock’s, _and you’re currently in it._

The man behind the desk’s expression grows horrified as she pulls a handgun from her waistband and levels it at his head. _Thank you for your service_ , she says, and pulls the trigger, demeanor cool as ice the entire time.

The new man from earlier jumps and cowers when he hears the shot, and then the woman is turning towards him, tucking the gun back into her waistband. 

_You can have his job after you’ve taken care of the body_ , she tells him before leaving the room just as the tape cuts out. The whole time, she’s managed not to turn her head towards the camera in the room, but the voice seems familiar. The Serbian language contains several harsh syllables and intonations, however, so the tone of voice floats aimlessly through his mind palace for several minutes as he tries in vain to pin it down. There’s a nagging voice at the back of his mind telling him he knows the voice much better than he thinks, but he forces it back. It’s a possibility he absolutely refuses to consider until he’s eliminated all of the impossible. He puts in the next tape. 

The office again. This time, the new man from the last video is behind the desk. He doesn’t look particularly authoritative. Sherlock smirks. 

A man in a black jumper enters the room. _She says it’s time we talked to him._

The man behind the desk nods and bends down to pick something up. He comes back up with a gun. _Is she sure? We would not want to disrupt our plans too early._

Black Jumper nods. _He has been here too long. If he stays any longer, he will be a real problem if he escapes._

The man behind the desk laughs a dark laugh. _He will not escape._

_She just wants to make sure he does not_ , replies Black Jumper. 

Both men are about to step out of the room when the door opens up on its own. The woman walks in, and Sherlock holds his breath, waiting for her to reveal her face. _Are you ready?_

Both men nod, and the woman looks around the room, as though making sure it’s secure. The camera catches her face just as she smiles a smile as dead as Magnussen’s. 

_Then let’s go get Sherlock Holmes_ , says Mary, and Sherlock feels as though a bucket of ice has just been thrown over his head, the chips still tumbling out and causing tiny icy shocks all over his body each time he thinks it’s over. He nearly throws his laptop off the sofa in shock before replaying the scene thirty more times to make sure it’s her, his brain screaming in an endless loop of _No no no no no no no no no_. 

He needs to make sure that it was she who had discovered his presence, seen to his torture, then had the nerve to pretend to be friends with him for nearly a year. To live near him, to spend time with him, to laugh with him. 

To take the love of his life from him.

He had known she had a dark past, but this? This is something he could never have foreseen. Even in his mind palace, on the plane, where he had first posited the theory that Moriarty was more than one person, she had been excluded from the conversation, her brand of action not quite that of the women in the mystery. 

Each time, the smile is more disconcerting. He had thought Magnussen’s smile was dead, lifeless, completely terrifying, but this one, this one spoke of deeper levels of evil, ones he could not even begin to imagine. 

In retrospect, he should never have shot Magnussen to protect Mary; he should have shot Mary to protect Magnussen. 

Once the horror has slightly receded and his rational mind once again reaches the forefront, his eye catches on his mobile, and an icy hand returns to grip his heart. 

_John_. 

He is alone with Mary. Sherlock’s breathing starts to come in gasps. 

Sherlock’s mobile rings. He sees the picture of John appear on the screen, and he leaps off the sofa, jamming the phone to his ear.

“John! She’s—,” he shouts into it, but John is already talking. 

“Sherlock, it’s Mary, it’s _Mary_ , she’s Moriarty, she’s not in labour, the baby was fake,” he rambles, as though trying to fit as much knowledge into one sentence as he can. Sherlock can easily deduce what that means, and a phantom ache appears in his bullet wound, momentarily pushing the breath from his lungs. _John isn’t safe. Mary knows._

“Sherlock, she’s coming for you, you have to _leave_ , you have to leave _right now,_ ” John’s voice has become a whisper now, a whisper with a fierce undercurrent of rage. He’s helpless, and he hates it. 

“John, you have to hide, you have to get away from her first!” he shouts back. He can’t have John putting himself in danger for him. The whole point of all of this was to keep John out of danger, and look what had happened instead. 

“Sherlock, _she’s coming for you_ —,” John cuts off with the sound of metal on bone, and Sherlock’s heart shatters in his chest.

“JOHN! JOHN—.”

There’s a scraping sound as someone picks up John’s mobile from the ground. Sherlock holds his breath.

“Oh, Sherlock, he’s just knocked out. We don’t need him around for what’s to come next. And besides, I’ll have more fun killing him after I’ve killed you, I’ll really be able to take my time with it. _You_ know how good I am with making it last,” comes a higher, more terrifying voice on the other end of the line. The scars on his back feel like they’re on fire. She giggles, and Sherlock’s skin crawls. 

“See you soo-ooon,” she sing-songs, and the line is cut off before Sherlock can even think of a retort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the cliffhanger I promise I love you all


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A gunshot tears him back into the present, and for a moment he thinks it’s finally over.  
>  He opens his eyes and finds himself lying on the ground, but very much alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update to make up for the cliff hanger from yesterday. :)

Sherlock has never had less control over his thought process than he does right now.

_John is in danger. John received a hard blow to the head. John is hurt. John may be bleeding. John may be bleeding out right now, and you have no idea where he is._

Sherlock paces back and forth frantically, the duvet billowing around and drooping off his shoulders. 

_Possible complications:_

_1\. John may have received a hard blow to the occipital lobe and lost his vision forever._  
2\. John may have received a hard blow to either side of his head and become completely paralyzed on one side.  
3\. John may have received a hard a blow to his frontal lobe, and may no longer even be John.   
Further complications: What would he do if John was no longer John? What would John do? How would they live? How—  
4\. John may have received a hard blow to the head and di— 

With a sound he doesn’t recognize, Sherlock wrenches himself back to the present. He realizes his fists are clenched tightly in his hair when he nearly pulls out a handful, tearing him further away from the downward spiral his thoughts have taken. His vast intellect is incredibly useful to him most days, but this also means that it is perfectly capable of concocting the worst possible worst case scenario, and he needs to stop it before he goes insane. 

The pain grounds him, and he forces himself to sit down on the sofa. _Not his armchair; too close to John’s._

He has a limited amount of time before Mary gets here; first he must determine how much.

There are only two places the altercation between John and Mary could have taken place: the closest hospital to their flat, or the flat itself.

Chasing John down and knocking him out would be much more difficult in a public setting filled with medical personnel. They are therefore most likely at the flat. So far, so obvious.

He replays what he witnessed of the phone call again in his head. It was a much longer phone call than necessary to simply convey the essentials. _John, I’m in labour, come to the hospital_ only takes moments to say, after all. Most likely, she lured John back to the flat by telling him she would need a change of clothes and essentials for the baby, things she had not had the chance to grab “on her way out.”

John would then have walked into the flat, found Mary without the fake baby belly she’d been wearing ( _John didn’t know about the fake belly; John hasn’t seen Mary without clothing since the early days of the pregnancy; John and Mary haven’t been intimate since not long after the wedding; John never truly forgave Mary; Ignore sensation of heart soaring_ ), and he had figured it out. Or she had told him. He can only deduce so much. 

And then… What? John had clearly run off somewhere within the flat to hide ( _bathroom most likely, due to locking door_ ), and then—

Sherlock promptly halts the train of thought that immediately goes hurtling off towards everything that could be wrong with John again, and redirects it towards Mary. 

Mary, who by his calculations is forty-five minutes away by cab.

Mary is the new Moriarty. Mary has been Moriarty for much longer than he had expected, likely the entirety of the two years he was gone, and yet he still has no idea how she managed to pull off so many trips abroad right under John’s nose. 

How could someone with Mary’s cover get to Eastern Europe?

Mary Elizabeth Morstan is a nurse. Sherlock steeples his fingers under his chin and lets his eyes drift up towards the ceiling as he ponders ways a nurse could travel several times to Eastern Europe over the course of two years without anyone thinking it was odd, least of all her long-term boyfriend, soon-to-be fiancé. 

He runs past business trips ( _obviously not_ ), visiting family ( _she claimed she was an orphan_ ), adopting a child ( _ludicrous_ ). He growls in frustration, kneading his fists in his eyes. 

He wastes a precious four more minutes thinking before he finally touches upon the ( _obvious, so obvious_ ) solution: volunteer work. She could easily have told John she was doing volunteer work in underprivileged communities in Eastern Europe, and if the Serbian organization was listed as a charity ( _which, now he thinks of it, is ridiculously easy to accomplish_ ), she could easily get away with “volunteering” there several times. John would probably have supported it. Sherlock isn’t sure what he’d say if he was told exactly what she had been doing there, and to who. 

Redirect.

Mary is on her way now. She is coming to kill him; of that he is sure. 

The old Moriarty had liked to play games with him, and for that he is grateful, because otherwise, he would likely not be alive right now. Mary, it would seem, has a more pragmatic personality. If something is in her way, she’ll get rid of it. 

Like she’d gotten rid of John, who could already be bleeding out on the floor of his own flat, his mind hopelessly damaged beyond the point of—.

Redirect.

He looks down at his watch: 20 minutes left. He’s still unsure as to how to tackle the situation. 

John’s words come back to him: _she’s coming for you._ The last time he’d said that, he had been referring to the previous Moriarty, and suddenly, Sherlock knows exactly what he’s going to do. 

He heads over to the kitchen to put the kettle on, then rushes into his bedroom to change into one of his black suits as he sends a text to Mycroft. 

**It’s Mary. She’s coming. Send help. –SH**

He’s just played the first few bars of _Partita number one_ when he hears the front door click discreetly open. He keeps playing, ignoring the quiet seventeen steps until he hears the flat door creak. He stops.

“Most people knock,” he says, his voice barely wavering as the remembered words tumble past his lips. “But then you’re not most people, I suppose.”

He finally turns, and Mary is giving him a wide, Cheshire grin. She looks at him expectantly until he says, “Kettle’s just boiled,” confirming that the cameras he’d found in the flat had been Moriarty’s.

She looks absolutely delighted as she parrots back, “Johann Sebastian would be appalled.” 

Sherlock hadn’t realized how much he needed that final confirmation until she said the words. _His_ words. Suddenly, everything is much less tentative. His vision clears, his mind perfectly on track, the veil finally lifted. 

Her point made, she stops the strange, repeated dance. She reaches into the back of her jeans and pulls out the silenced pistol, pointing it at his forehead, this time.

Sherlock knows she will not miss, not again. 

“And here we are again!” she laughs, and there is no trace of genuine emotion in it. Sherlock feels a shiver go through him. No matter how much he pretends to be a sociopath, he is fully aware that there is no longer any such diagnostic, and that he never fit the old one in the first place. Mary, however… Mary would be the posterchild for what is now called anti-social personality disorder. 

“What do you want, Mary?” he makes himself say. 

“I want to rebuild my empire in peace. The transition was set to go perfectly smoothly before _someone_ had to go around ruining everything…”

She raises the gun for a moment, takes the safety off, then aims it right back at his head. 

“I won’t waste time asking what _you_ want, because I’m afraid saving John isn’t in the cards for you today!” She smiles, wider than ever. “Unfortunately, only one of us can have what they want, and it isn’t going to be you.”

Sherlock scrambles for an answer. Mycroft’s people will be here soon, but he has to keep her talking. He watches as his mind palace eliminates his escape options one by one.

“What happened to doing anything to keep him?” he finally asks. 

She smirks. “How much harder would you have looked at me, really, if I hadn’t said that?”

Her last words close the door to his final contingency plan with an ominous bang. 

He closes his eyes, rearranging his thoughts until only the clarity remains. He knows that even if Mycroft’s people get here right now, they still won’t be able to save him. 

But if he keeps her talking, they’ll be able to save John.

In the end, he tells her, “Your Serbian was appalling.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. My Serbian was much better than yours. How do you think I convinced them you were the spy?”

Sherlock blanches. The reality he has been trying so hard to hold on to starts to shiver around the edges.

“You had covered your trail nearly perfectly, Sherlock, I’ll give you that. But unlike Mycroft, you didn’t understand the concept of slang… Too grammatically correct for your own good!” she laughs. “You’re lucky I wasn’t able to convince them Mycroft was a spy, too.”

Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes for a moment, but words don’t come. Mary waits, smiling patiently, clearly aware of the effect her words are having as he tries to compose a sentence through the tsunami of memories suddenly crashing over him. 

_His arms hurt. The chains have been chafing his wrists for days now, and they’ve been relentless about never letting him out of a standing position. Every muscle—_

The scene freezes. Rather than the usual Serbian taunting, an English voice speaks, this time, and he had never thought he’d be happy to hear it.

_John Watson is definitely in danger._

The phantom pain sends shudders through his body, but he shoves it down and focuses on Mary. Mary, who is in the middle of his sitting room, pointing a gun at his forehead. 

“How _did_ you make such a smooth transition between the two of you? The Serbians didn’t seem to have any objections at all,” he forces out. He shoves the panic to the edges of his consciousness, where it continues to claw at his grasp on the present.

Mary’s grin stretches impossibly wider. “Funnily enough, the one arm you didn’t manage to destroy was the one we were working the most closely with. They, unlike all the others, knew what was coming. Jim had planned this already, he knew that day would come, and everything was ready to fall into place when it did. You were a nuisance of course, wrecking every other part of the organization, but of course, you’re fairly easily dealt with…” 

“What do you—,” he begins, but abruptly stops when she throws something small and white at him, her laughter echoing through the room. With a final burst of static, the panic explodes through his defenses and reality disappears as his body remembers before his brain even registers what has happened and _he’s flinching away, collapsing onto the floor to get away before it burns again, before it touches the other open burns on his back as they get closer and closer, but he’s chained to the wall, he can’t back away, and the burns are multiplying, they’re turning him into an ashtray, they’re laughing as he screams, they’re—_

A gunshot tears him back into the present, and for a moment he thinks it’s finally over.   
He opens his eyes and finds himself lying on the ground, but very much alive. 

However, he’s also face-to-face with Mary, who is very much dead. He scrambles backwards, for once not comfortable around a corpse, and what he sees nearly makes his heart stop for good. 

John is on all fours in the doorway, congealed blood matting his hair and dripping down the entire left side of his face and upper torso. His breathing is loud and irregular, like he’s just run the hardest race of his life, and the eyes that lock with Sherlock’s are full of pain, desperation, and love.

And he’s still holding a smoking gun. 

There’s a tense moment where neither of them speaks. Then, John gets his breath back and launches himself across the room, holding on to him tightly, and he’s getting blood on Sherlock’s clothes, but Sherlock has never cared less about anything in the world, because John is holding him and rocking him back and forth and whispering, _She’s gone, it’s alright, they’re gone, you took care of them, you’re here, stay with me, I love you_ , keeping him firmly grounded in the present until many pairs of feet come running up the stairs and Mycroft’s men arrive to take care of the mess.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“John?”_
> 
> _John looks up from his own plate, a bit of sauce stuck to the corner of his mouth. Sherlock loves him._
> 
>   _“Yes, love?”_
> 
>   _He’s perfectly calm. It doesn’t make sense._
> 
>   _“Are you… all right?”_
> 
>   _“How do you mean?” John replies, and takes another bite._
> 
>   _Sherlock swallows. “Head wound aside, you _have_ just… killed your wife.” _
> 
>   _John’s left hand spasms for a moment around his chopsticks, but his face is unmoved. Sherlock admires his suddenly perfect self-control._
> 
>   _“Yes,” John says, his voice betraying nothing._

Safe in John’s arms, Sherlock is barely aware of Mycroft’s men entering the flat, much less of them cleaning it out. They take everything with them: both guns, all of the surveillance tapes, both of the laptops, Mary’s body.

_Mary’s body._

There are a few disorienting minutes when John whispers something to him and kisses his forehead, then disappears. He holds on to his knees and listens, completely detached, as Mycroft and John argue about John’s illegal service weapon. 

They come to a compromise very quickly, however, and soon John is back, whispering apologies into his hair. 

John holds him through it all, refusing to allow them to ask him questions until this is all taken care of. Mycroft puts up a token protest, but Sherlock knows that Mycroft knows John’s right, and what feels like hours later, everyone is finally gone. 

John rubs up and down both of his arms until they warm, then tilts his chin up towards him. 

“Hey. You there?” he asks tentatively, taking a moment to look into each of Sherlock’s eyes. 

Sherlock starts to speak, but his throat is dry from disuse. He manages a hoarse, “Yes.” 

John smiles at him, then starts to rise to his feet, holding his hand out towards Sherlock. “Only, this floor is murder on the knees. Can you walk?”

 _Murder on the knees_. Something clicks in the darkest recesses of Sherlock’s mind, but stays there. It does, however, give him the push he needs to take John’s hand and let him prop him up in his armchair. John pulls his own closer, until their knees are touching, then puts his elbows on his knees as he leans in. 

“Ok. How are you feeling?” he asks. His face is open, and Sherlock has to look him over several times before he realizes he has no expectations. He simply wants to know, and help. 

“I… A bit… Fuzzy,” he replies, vaguely annoyed at himself for not finding a better word. Not everything feels quite real yet. 

John seems to be considering carefully before he speaks. 

“I know eating is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but you need to. Today was trying, to say the very least, and you have to get your blood sugar back up before I let you rest.”

Sherlock doesn’t even protest, which makes John’s brow furrow with worry.

“After that, we’re going to go take a shower…” he trails off at Sherlock’s surprised expression.

His brow furrows even further. “If you think I trust you not to fall down and hurt yourself right now, then you’re wrong.” 

He pauses. “If it’s okay with you, of course,” he adds. 

He waits for Sherlock to nod before continuing. “Then we’re going to go to bed. And when you’ve rested for about a year, we are going to talk about what happened.”

*** 

It’s a testament to how exhausted Sherlock is that he’s halfway through a dish of Pad Thai before it hits him. 

“John?”

John looks up from his own plate, a bit of sauce stuck to the corner of his mouth. Sherlock loves him.

“Yes, love?” 

He’s perfectly calm. It doesn’t make sense. 

“Are you… all right?” 

“How do you mean?” John replies, and takes another bite. 

Sherlock swallows. “Head wound aside, you _have_ just… killed your wife.” 

John’s left hand spasms for a moment around his chopsticks, but his face is unmoved. Sherlock admires his suddenly perfect self-control. 

“Yes,” John says, his voice betraying nothing. 

“And you’re… all right?” Sherlock is starting to get a creeping feeling that he will regret having initiated this conversation very, very soon. He watches as John’s hand spasms again, the bit of noodle falling back into his plate. 

John picks it up again and keeps eating. 

“John. We have to talk about this.”

There’s a momentary silence, and then—.

“SHE WAS SECONDS FROM KILLING _YOU_!”  
`  
Sherlock drops his chopsticks in surprise. John breathes raggedly for a moment, his fist clenched tightly. He takes one more deep breath before picking up Sherlock’s chopsticks, handing them to him in the gentlest of gestures, and saying, “Not now. _Please_ , Sherlock. Not now.”

Sherlock nods, still holding his chopsticks uselessly. John watches him until he takes another bite. 

“When we’ve rested, all right? We will talk about everything—,” and Sherlock knows he hasn’t forgotten about the scars, “— _everything_ , when we’ve rested. All right?”

They finish the meal in silence. 

***

Sherlock can feel his eyes drooping as he watches John put the dishes away. He doesn’t wash them completely, just gives them a quick rinse and leaves them in the sink before turning towards Sherlock. The blood caked to the side of his face is disconcerting, but Sherlock also knows that shallow head wounds tend to bleed much more than one would think. He concentrates on that, and the fact that John has ( _so far_ ) shown no signs of head trauma.

Whatever John sees calms him down, his muscles loosening and his gaze softening. He walks towards Sherlock’s chair and pulls him into a hug, and Sherlock sighs with the relief of being enveloped in _John_. Everything about John’s scent is calming to him, from the smell of his detergent to the warm, lovely feeling of _home_. Much too soon, John pulls away. 

“Shower, Sherlock,” he says softly, and takes Sherlock by the hand to lead him to the bathroom. 

Once inside, he sits Sherlock on the closed toilet and starts to undress him. John opens the suit jacket and gently slips it off his shoulders, meticulously folding it before placing it on the counter. The shirt comes next. John delicately tugs it out of Sherlock’s trousers, then unbuttons it efficiently before sliding it down his arms. He runs his hands down Sherlock’s back to remove it, and Sherlock tenses when his hands touch the scars. True to his word, however, John says nothing. 

Sherlock’s trousers and pants go next, and soon Sherlock is naked, shivering, and feeling exposed. John kisses his forehead before pulling him up and gently standing him in the tub. He shucks his own clothes quickly, then steps in behind him. 

Sherlock is glad John suggested this, because the water feels wonderful. It warms him to the core, and he starts to feel a little more present. Behind him, he hears John fumbling for Sherlock’s expensive body wash. 

“Do you… Is this okay?”

Sherlock turns so that he’s facing John and the water is beating down his back, and nods. John raises his hands almost reverently as he lathers the body wash over Sherlock’s chest. He rubs gently up and down Sherlock’s arms, an unfathomable look in his eyes. It makes Sherlock tremble a bit, and John stops, looking up at him worriedly.

Sherlock has never felt precious before. 

“Are you all right?” John asks, concerned. Sherlock finds he can’t speak; instead, he winds his arms around John’s compact body and holds him close, trying to convey all that he can’t say. 

John seems to understand. He tightens his own arms around Sherlock and whispers _I love you_ before pulling back so they can look each other in the eye. Sherlock feels a drop of water slip down his nose, but it’s not from the shower. John stretches up to kiss him softly on the mouth. 

“Are you all right?” he asks again. This time, Sherlock manages to nod.

He takes some of the soap and slowly lathers it in his hands before gently scrubbing John’s face and hair clean, the blood momentarily turning the tub pink. Beneath his fingers, he feels the already scabbed-over break in the skin, and the relief he feels is of an intensity he didn’t know was possible. When he finishes, John is smiling up at him and holding his hand out for the shampoo. 

He’d been tired already, but when John tells him to bend forward and starts rubbing shampoo over his head, he nearly melts right into the tub. Everything about John’s movements is gentle and soothing, and he barely notices John washing himself afterwards before leading Sherlock back out of the tub. John towels him off and manages to coax him into a fresh pair of pants, but that’s as far as they manage to get before Sherlock’s eyelids become heavier than lead. 

John slips on his own pants and opens the door to Sherlock’s bedroom, gently pushing Sherlock towards the bed. He lifts up the duvet, manoeuvers Sherlock in, then tucks the blankets in around him. He hesitates a moment too long, and Sherlock manages to crack an eyelid.

“John?” he slurs. 

John’s fingers are twining around each other. “Should I… I should go upstairs,” he says. He turns and reaches for the doorknob. 

Suddenly, Sherlock is wide awake. 

“No!” he protests, then winces at the vehemence in his voice. “No, please, John,” he repeats, quietly. 

“Are you sure you… want me here?” 

Sherlock frowns, confused. He genuinely can’t remember a time when he didn’t want John here. 

“It’s just… I did this. I brought Mary into our lives,” John grits out, his voice is harder, edged with anger, but in the dark room, Sherlock can’t tell who it’s directed towards. The only thing he knows is that he wants John to stay. 

“John, please, stay. I—,” he swallows as he realizes that John keeps saying it, but he never says it back. “I love you. Please stay,” he says more firmly. 

John’s eyes widen, but he shakes his head again. “I did this,” he repeats. Sherlock’s brain is running at what could optimistically be called half speed, and he doesn’t know what to say.

“Did what, John?” he finally manages. 

“Nearly killed you.” John’s voice cracks on the final word. He turns away again, his left hand obviously clenching now. 

Sherlock has never felt more confused. “John, Mary almost killed me. You saved my life.”

John lets out humourless bark of a laugh. “And why did Mary know where you lived, Sherlock? Why did Mary know who you are? Why did Mary know anything at all about you?”

Sherlock blinks at him. “Moriarty has a vast intelligence network, she obviously—.”

“No, Sherlock.”

“I— what?” This is the most incoherent he’s been in a long time. He finds he doesn’t much like it.

“I told her. While you were gone, when we were dating, I told her. I told her everything about you. I talked about you all the time. For fuck’s sake, we visited your grave together. She knew as much about you as I did. Which is why this is my fault.” 

John is refusing to look at him. 

If he won’t look at him, how is he supposed to explain how completely wrong he is?

“John, you did what any sensible non-sociopath would have done in the same situation. Your best friend had just died. Of course you wanted to talk about me. This is in no way your fault.”

John’s lips twitch upwards a little at the mention of _non-sociopaths_. Sherlock gives him a small, hopeful smile, but John still isn’t moving. 

“It’s not your fault, John,” he repeats. John closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering inhale.

Sherlock tentatively reaches an arm out and grasps John’s clenched left hand. Slowly, carefully, he opens it up one finger at a time and slides his own hand into their place. John looks down at their joined hands. 

“John, please, just—,” Sherlock searches frantically for a word, and settles on the first one that his mind catches in passing. “Stay. Please.” 

John collapses onto him, his arms frantically tightening around Sherlock. Sherlock holds him close, running his hands up and down his back in what he hopes is a soothing manner. He waits.

“All right,” John tells his neck. 

“All right,” Sherlock answers. He loosens his own arms so that John can get into the bed with him. John climbs in behind him and strokes a hand across Sherlock’s shoulders.

There’s a rustling noise as John readjusts the duvet to accommodate him, then turns back towards Sherlock to put his arms around him, nuzzling his face into Sherlock’s neck for a moment. Sherlock sighs contentedly.

He feels John’s long, controlled exhale against his shoulder blade as John settles in behind him, pulling him close. John gently runs a finger across the longest whip scar, then kisses softly across the trail his finger has just left. 

The simple _love_ in that gesture nearly brings Sherlock to tears again, and he sniffs loudly to cover his hiccup. 

“Tomorrow,” John whispers into his neck, not fooled for a second, and Sherlock nods. 

“Good night, Sherlock,” John says, and Sherlock is just opening his mouth to reply when he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaahhhh we're nearly there


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Sherlock, she was never my wife. I did a lot of thinking last night.” John reaches out and takes Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock realizes he wasn’t the only one watching his bedfellow last night._   
>  _“She never existed, did she? The woman I thought I’d fallen in love with?”_

John looks peaceful in sleep. Sherlock watches in the dark as his eyes move beneath his eyelids, chasing his dreams. Sometimes, he makes a soft snuffling noise before rearranging his limbs, searching Sherlock out in the bed. Sherlock lets himself be pulled in close again, and falls asleep once more. 

***

With the light from the sunrise shining on his face, John looks beautiful. Sherlock watches as the rays reflect off his hair and make it shine, illuminating his face and making every feature seem to glow. John looks so lovely like this that Sherlock spends an hour committing it to his mind palace before falling back to sleep. 

***

Sherlock wakes up to a soft kiss on his cheek. A smattering of stubble tickles his temple as John lies down again behind him. He’s very warm, and it’s only then that he remembers they are both very nearly naked. He suddenly feels self-conscious; John had always said he needed to gain weight, and if anything, he has lost weight during his time away and since his return. His bony angles and protruding limbs must seem incredibly unattractive, and he questions why he’d ever thought this could be a good idea. The more rational part of his brain argues that John had found him attractive mere days ago, but he hadn’t gotten his shirt all the way off, had he? He tries to pull the blanket back over his chest and looks up at John.

John’s brow is furrowed; he looks confused as to why Sherlock has moved away. He tentatively reaches forward and pulls the duvet back again. 

“Please don’t. You’re lovely,” he says. Sherlock snorts, but when he quickly scans over John’s face, he sees nothing but sincerity, and for a moment, he’s completely off-balance. 

John pulls him close, and what he’d felt in the shower washes over him again. He feels wanted, loved, _special_. He melts in John’s arms. 

“How’re you feeling?” John asks after a moment. Sherlock tries to burrow deeper into the blankets.

“Better. Everything is sharper now. Crisper,” Sherlock tries to explain. It’s true; he feels grounded, in the present, and his relief is nearly palpable. 

“That’s good,” John replies, and Sherlock feels him smile into the top of his head. It feels wonderful, but Sherlock knows it can’t last. There are things that must be said. 

He takes a deep, calming breath. “And what about you?”

John tenses, then relaxes again, as though afraid of breaking Sherlock. “I’m… better,” is all he says. 

No matter what he’d said last night, he’s clearly still having a moral crisis, and Sherlock can practically feel the inner war he’s waging with himself. 

“Do you want to talk?” 

Sherlock tentatively reaches out and smooths his hand over John’s head wound. The bleeding had already stopped by the time he’d arrived at the flat, and he seems to have mostly recovered. 

“I really don’t,” John says, an edge to his voice, and Sherlock jerks his hand away, hurt. 

John grabs his hand and returns it to his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Sherlock… It’s just. It’s hard. I lived with her. She— She was carrying— I thought she was carrying my child.”

Sherlock nods, terrified of startling John and making him stop talking. After a beat, John goes on.

“I took a cab back to the flat to pick up some of her things. She was going to need more clothes, and the baby was going to need diapers and we’d packed it all up in a few bags before… before all of this happened. She said she’d been in rush, understandably, and forgot the bags. But when I got to the flat—,” he stops, his gaze becoming distant. Sherlock waits. 

“She was there. But she wasn’t pregnant anymore. I know I haven’t touched her since she— since she shot you, but until then I hadn’t realized just how badly I’d fucked up. She pulled out her gun, and told me that she’d had a great time with you in Serbia, but that it was time for this all to stop. I remembered what you’d said about the sniper rifles when you were on the roof, and Mary was an assassin before we met, and it all sort of… clicked. So I took a chance and I ran, I locked myself in the toilet, I had to warn you, but then she ran in with the pistol and I really thought,” he swallows, composing himself, “I thought I was going to die. I thought she’d come to shoot me.” 

She could have. Realistically, Mary could easily have simply shot John there and come for Sherlock afterwards. Only her twisted sense of revenge had stopped her. He crushes John to himself, smothering his next words in his chest. John protests for a second, then pulls Sherlock tighter, too. 

“She didn’t, though. Obviously. She pistol-whipped me, but I twisted a bit and she didn’t hit me as hard as she was supposed to. I pretended to pass out,” he runs a hand over the scab, “But I knew she’d go for you, so I ran… Well… stumbled, I guess, it still fucking hurt, and paid a cabbie double to get me to Baker Street as fast as he could,” he finishes. 

He laughs hollowly. “You know the rest.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“John, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve put you through. I’m sorry you had to shoot your _wife_ —,” Sherlock breaks off as a sob starts to claw its way to the top of his throat, and swallows hard to force it back down. John has already suffered so much because of him, it’s senseless that he still is. 

“Sherlock, she was never my wife. I did a lot of thinking last night.” John reaches out and takes Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock realizes he wasn’t the only one watching his bedfellow last night. 

“She never existed, did she? The woman I thought I’d fallen in love with?”

And that statement alone is heartbreaking enough. Sherlock had left him, had broken him, and the companion John had found who could get him through it all had turned out to be a fiction. He had really been alone for those two years. 

Sherlock had been alone for two years, but John hadn’t died. He knew that if he tried hard enough, he would see him again. His arms tighten around John, trying to communicate that he’s here now. 

Eventually, John speaks. “We have to talk about you, too. The flashback you had yesterday nearly killed you.”

Sherlock closes his eyes. He knows John’s right, he does, but he has no idea where to start. 

“Why did Mary say she had a good time with you in Serbia?”

And then he does. 

He tells John about cold nights in Russia, staking out drug dealers and taking them down one by one. He tells him about his brief stint in Bulgaria, pretending to be an ambassador’s assistant for three months to figure out who was on his payroll. He goes through every country, every job, while John listens with rapt attention, holding his hand and soothingly stroking his thumb over it. 

Until he reaches the last piece of the web: Serbia. 

“I had successfully infiltrated the gang in Serbia. They had no doubt that I was one of theirs, and they entrusted me with many shipments, some of which went ‘wrong,’ of course. Mycroft’s men collected what they could, and I helped them set up the surveillance we were watching together. 

“I thought I had gotten careless, but after watching the tapes, I know what happened. Moriarty had worked most closely with the Serbians, and they were aware that there was to be a changeover in who held the title. So when Mary arrived, they did exactly as they were told, which was to apprehend me. 

“I thought they were trying to figure out why I was there, but since Mary knew who I was, I now realize all of the—,” he takes a shaky breath, then powers through, “—torture… was just for show. They dragged it on for eight weeks; I was certain I was going to die, until Mycroft somehow showed up and took me home. I didn’t even recognize him at first.” 

John’s arm has tightened to the point that it is shaking slightly. Sherlock tentatively looks up. 

“She did this, then?” John asks, a dangerous edge to his voice as he strokes his hand across the highest whip scar on Sherlock’s back. 

There’s no point in hiding it anymore. “If not directly, yes.” 

Sherlock can feel him seething in rage. If Mary wasn’t already dead, Sherlock would be afraid for her. Almost. 

Finally, John seems to deflate.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

Sherlock jerks his head up, surprised. “What do you possibly have to apologize for!?” 

“No matter what you said last night, _I_ brought her into our lives. _I_ showed her pictures of you. _I_ told her about the smoking, you’re covered in cigarette burns because of me, you can’t possibly tell me that wasn’t some kind of sick joke on her part because I told her you were so addicted you needed _three nicotine patches sometimes_!” 

John’s last sentence echoes off the walls. Sherlock is just starting to wonder how to reassure him when John abruptly pulls away. Sherlock falls back onto the sheets, surprised. 

“Where are you going?” he cries out after him, confused and hurting. It feels like something is expanding in his chest, blocking his lungs and airways. 

John turns with an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m leaving. I sold you out to Moriarty, you can’t possibly still want me around.”

He starts looking for his shirt. Sherlock scrambles for a sentence as he feels his heart literally _ache_ in his chest.

“You said you would stay,” he says, and he doesn’t even recognize his own voice. 

John looks up, his eyes locking with Sherlock’s as he drops the shirt he’d just picked up.

The next thing Sherlock is aware of is John’s lips on his own, crashing them together. He flies into action, pulling John closer and winding his legs around his waist, leaving him no escape. John buries his head in his shoulder and fiercely whispers _I love you so much, Sherlock_ and they hold each other, kissing and panting, until Sherlock is confident John is going nowhere. 

“I love you, John,” he says into John’s shoulder. 

John’s head comes up slowly, and he places a soft kiss on Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock tentatively kisses back, letting himself drown in the feeling of it. John deepens the kiss, pressing harder and opening his mouth wider until their tongues brush together, and Sherlock can’t help but whimper into John’s mouth. John swallows the sound as he crushes their bodies together, and Sherlock has never been more aware of how little they’re wearing. 

John breaks away from Sherlock’s lips to mouth at his jaw, sucking at his pulse point until Sherlock moans aloud. He keeps kissing as he moves down, leaving another mark on Sherlock’s collarbone as Sherlock clutches frantically at his hair. 

“Is this okay?” he asks, raising his head, and when Sherlock nods frantically, he takes one of Sherlock’s nipples between his teeth and licks at the tip. Sherlock _writhes_ , fairly sure there are undignified sounds coming from his mouth and absolutely powerless to do anything about it. He pulls John up higher so that their mouths come together again, but this time John’s hands find both his nipples and Sherlock arches up, breaking the kiss as he pants at the ceiling. 

He pulls John closer, and the movement slips their clothed cocks past each other, making both of them groan. They stop for a moment to remove their little remaining clothing, and when they come together once more, the feeling of bare skin on bare skin is indescribably good. 

John slips his hand between them and strokes them both at once, and Sherlock yanks his head down to kiss him, because it feels _incredible_. All of his nerve endings are firing off at once, and he’s touching John, and John is touching him, and nothing has ever been more perfect before. He closes his hand over John’s so that they’re stroking together, and cries out when John’s other hand pushes a knuckle into his perineum before brushing at his hole. 

“John, please, _please_ ,” is all he can manage to say. John pulls away for a moment. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, slightly more tentative, now, and Sherlock nods. 

John nods, more to himself than anyone else. “Have you got lube?”

It takes a moment for Sherlock to register his words, because every rumble of his voice is now vibrating through both their chests. “Top drawer,” he finally says. 

The first finger burns, and his face must show it, because John stops immediately. “Too much?” 

“Just… wait. Please,” Sherlock says through gritted teeth. Eventually, the muscle loosens, and John twists his finger a little. Sherlock feels something tighten at the base of his spine. 

When John squeezes a second finger in and crooks them, Sherlock sees stars. “John!”

John smiles, then crooks his fingers again. Sherlock arches his back off the bed, his fingers scrabbling for purchase in the sheets as he pants. John gently scissors his fingers inside him, stretching him as Sherlock makes inarticulate noises in return. 

He has no idea how much time has passed by the time he manages to force, “ _Please_!” past his teeth. John pulls out his fingers, and Sherlock feels strangely empty for a moment before John lines himself up and pushes inside. 

Sherlock can’t breathe. John is looking down at him in awe, with a look that communicates all of his feelings at once. They’re connected, joined, _together_. John leans down to kiss him gently, reverently, as he starts to move. Sherlock groans into his mouth, and he moves faster, trying to find the right angle. 

When he does find it, Sherlock’s mouth drops open and he’s fairly sure he’s going to have to apologize to John later for the scratches littering his back. John leans down to kiss him again, then whispers, “You’re so beautiful like this,” against his lips. Sherlock feels like he’s melting. 

Before long, the tension at the base of his spine starts to rise to uncontainable levels, and he knows what’s about to happen. “John, I’m—,” he tries, but John reaches between them and wraps his hand around his cock, and he’s done for, sparks going off behind his eyes as every one of his muscles goes taut. Distantly, he hears John groaning through his own orgasm, and when he comes back to himself, they’re lying together, limbs tangled around each other, panting into each other’s mouths. 

“I love you,” John whispers into his skin. 

“You’ll stay?” Sherlock whispers back.

“For as long as you want me,” John responds, and Sherlock lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

He huffs a laugh. “I hope you’re prepared to never leave, then.”

John smiles at him, and it’s radiant. Sherlock feels like the sun has decided to concentrate all of its rays on him at once. He feels his own lips helplessly mirror John’s. 

There’s a long silence, and then, “I’ve just realized I never said thank you.”

“For what? For saving your life two years ago? Because I think it’s easily been balanced out by the amount of pain I’ve put you through since then, never mind the fact that you saved mine just yesterday, there’s really no need—.”

“Thank you for coming back, Sherlock,” he says, and pulls Sherlock closer.

Sherlock feels his eyes prickle at the corners, but can’t bring himself to say anything back. He eventually realizes that John has fallen asleep, and is making the quiet snuffling noise into his chest. Downstairs, he can hear Mrs. Hudson puttering around in her kitchen, and outside, he hears the sounds of London, the sounds of _home_ , and while he may have taken a rather roundabout way to get here, he’s here now, and nothing has ever felt more right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. That's it. Holy shit.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone for reading this, it means the world to me. I love you all <3


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